Auf Wiedersehen.

Don't stumble on the way out, deary.

V. Important.

Thanks to Bex for this one. I think it's important enough to repeat here. Why aren't we seeing these clips, these images of Iraq in mainstream media? I have no doubt it would make a difference in the polls.

F.

They Might Not Have Been Whores Back Then, But...

Jesus H. Does this not seem a little whore-y to you?

I suppose it's slightly redeeming that they waited until after Hillary dropped out to start kissing and telling for a small bills on the internets?

Ladies, where is your self-respect? It's going to take a shitload of one-ninety-niners to buy that back, I gotta say.

Yucky.

Can't Resist.

I'm supposed to pass this on to 10 people. But y'all hate fwd:fwd:fwds, right? So here you go.



Please peruse at your leisure. Then talk to your Republican and/or Conservative Democrat friends and neighbors who might not be paying close attention - the mainstream media isn't! - and let them know that McCain has lost most, if not all, of his credibility. (And no, I'm not saying that based just on this cleverly edited video. I have at least 20 reasons off the top of my head, but don't really feel that this "lighthearted romp of a blog" is an appropriate venue. I'd be glad to email you a diatribe or two worth of Why For's, however, so that you too can effectively win an argument against a Head-in-the-Sand-er any ole time).

Unavoidable, Really.

It had to happen eventually, don't you think? After this and this, we've finally come to this:

Sutherland Sentenced to 48 Days in Private Jail

Kiefer Sutherland has been handed an early Christmas gift - a Los Angeles judge has agreed to let the actor serve jail time at a private prison. Sutherland feared he'd be spending Christmas behind bars at the notorious Twin Towers facility after he was sentenced to spend 48 days in jail for drink driving. But the 24 star learned he'll be required to serve his time at the Glendale City Jail on Wednesday. Sutherland, who wore a black suit and tie for his court appearance, must complete his sentence by March 30. The actor pleaded no contest to DUI on October 9. Judge Stuart M. Rice also sentenced Sutherland to five years probation, and insisted the star must complete an 18-month alcohol education program and attend weekly therapy sessions for six months. As WENN went to press, Sutherland was being "processed" and booked into the Glendale City Jail. (imdb.com)

I guess the only thing I can say is that Kiefer is damn lucky that his show is already in hiatus due to the writer's strike, because I expect that Fox would be in a position to demand a punitive shitload of his Gin money (or Scotch, from what I understand) if he were responsible for their millions-on-millions of dollars hit show (really? still a hit? huh) being held up, back or sideways while he sits, shaking from withdrawals, in the pokey.

On the plus side: private prison, maybe a private cell? Perhaps our hero won't have to worry about protecting his anus while hunched over in the fetal position, suffering the aforementioned shakes!

I bore me. Care to join?

It poured today (shocking for Portland, I know, alert the media).

I wore Birkenstocks, a skirt and a beer sweatshirt (the one with Rasputin's image, that gets me lots of guys staring at my chest and saying "That is an AWESOME beer" and lots of girls staring at same, trying to figure out what the hell they are seeing, as The Unkillable's head sort of gets crammed in the bra-fashioned concave between the twins - the girl-staring is usually followed by a sneer, by the way, and yeah, I totally get it). So after walking around for a few hours like this, I was both proud of, and disgusted by myself. And not a little bit uncold.

Sun came out for a bit. Second rainbow in as many days. Nawwwww.

There was some sort of weirdo streetside snowboarding-in-October event today in what I did not previously know is known as "one of Portland's most famous alleys" (due to its location off the backdoor of a well-known strip-club), at the top of the North Park Blocks. I couldn't get a super good look at the action due to the throng of parka-ed and knit-capped young people standing around drinking the Redbull, Rockstar and other energy drinks being thrown at them by the "savvy" flash marketing teams crowded around the busy block in their slick marketing vehicles, but from what I could gather, there was essentially a fake-snow covered skate ramp and lots of daredevil youngins jumpin around and hollering and cheering for apparently amazing feats of snowboardery. I thought about trying to get a closer look, and perhaps a camera phone snap or two, but the weed smoke started to make my eyes burn (were that it were not true, but yes, I am obviously settling into utter old ladyness without even the hope of trying to fight the inevitability) and I was crankypants hungry (see above), so we kept moving on to the always-reliable if not funnily named Thai Peacock for late lunch/early dinner.

While enjoying veggie Pad See You and Pra Ram (listed on the menu with the words "It so good" after the description, and truly it is so), and watching the Red Bull Mini parked outside get mobbed by Trustafarians in dirty ripped pants and super expensive looking, Ready-for-Aspen-Mimsy? snow gear, I suddenly understood the context for something that I'd witnessed earlier while standing in Peet's, waiting impatiently for the condiment station to clear:

Four early-teen boys in what appeared to be coordinated down snow jackets (not rain jackets, mind you, but the fluffy puffy and totally unwaterproof fancy jackets that always make me think of Coco Chanel because of the cross-stitching) and ski hats (one boy in yellow jacket/yellow cap, another in purple jacket/purple cap, etc) crowded around the condiment cart trying to docter their beverages. Their ensembles troubled me, but as I had not yet had a drop of coffee, I didn't possess the powers of concentration needed to focus on the troublesome bits, nor the brain power needed to try to resolve it by coming up with plausible explanations for who they were or why they were there. Rich kids staying in the Marriot above, fully unclear on the concept of Portland as wet but not freezing, is the best I could come up with before forgetting the question altogther in my utter annoyance at how long the little pishers were taking to pour milk and sugar into their drinks. How hard is it to put some shit your cup and move along, hmmm?

I heard one of them say "No no, she said she likes it 'Light and Sweet' so put more cream in it" as he tossed three more sugar packets to the one pouring the milk (Whole milk, by the way, not cream or half and half). Purple Cap said "What does that even mean, anyway?" and Orange Cap repeated it "Light and sweet, you know, Light. And. Sweet." as if Purple Cap would get it if repeated to him several times in rapid succession. I involuntarily snickered, but I swear it was not about teen boy stupidity, but rather the fact that I so badly had to fight the urge to say something to the effect of "She likes it light and sweet, like her men!" At the slight snicker, Yellow Cap realized I'd been standing there waiting and seemed to get a bit desperate to move on. He poured more milk in, then more sugar, then more milk (and again with the Whole milk, which if you know Peet's coffee, you know is about as likely to lighten the cup as my pointing to it and saying "light and sweet, light and sweet" over and over again). Finally I couldn't take it anymore and stepped up with some elbows between the boys and grabbed the half and half jug to tip into my cup so I could get the hell out of the strange universe into which I had inadvertently stumbled. Orange took notice of my choice and totally punched Yellow in the arm and said "That's not even cream, you idiot, gawd" and rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner in my (or maybe Rasputin's) general direction as he grabbed the cup and poured a bunch of coffee into the trashbin next to the counter. "Yeah, but why is it called 'Light and Sweet?" said Purple again.

Let's hope it was the gange, yo, because otherwise I continue to live in fear for the future of this once great nation.

Sucktastic.

I am a truly sucky blogger. It's true. So true that I've had to use 'truly' and 'true' in adjoining sentences, right out of the gate. That is some truthy truth. See, I thought it had been maybe two or two-and-a-half weeks since logging in some mindless sharing here, but no no. When I clicked over today, I realized: it's been over a month. Shiza.

This is pretty typical of me and projects. Fun or otherwise. Big ideas. Lots of thought/discussion. TONS of intent. A decent start, full of commitment and maybe a dash of ingenuity (I'm thinking of the millions of bead-store-necklaces that are sitting around half finished, not necessarily the bloggy blog here). But delivery? Um. Yeah.

I don't have any great excuses. It's only stupid Working On Work Projects stuff. And since I sit at my computer 10 hours a day some days (14 on more than few, I'm sorry to admit), it's not like I couldn't click over and login and dash off a post. Except I can't. Because I'd have to log out of my work Gmail and all associated Google docs (people, Google docs are amazing - a bit slow on occasion, but cheap and convenient... like my men). In logging out of work Gmail, I risk not only missing something time sensitive and critical (it's been one emergency after another, I'm telling you) but also having to log back into 25 spreadsheets and templates -that would be pure craziness- anytime I want to say something. Plus with the constant sitting and writing and stressing and staring at the (lovely and large but glaring) screen, I'm completely boring and have nothing interesting to say, can't even pretend to have anything noteworthy to note (hilarious conversations & periodic chat with Bex notwithstanding, but totally inappropriate for bloggage, I'm afraid).

But you know, popping in this evening, I realized something: I've lost time. Not X-Files lost, but like, blink of an eye/where is my-life-flying-off-to-now lost. I don't know what happened to our beautiful summer, or how the cold crept in and bit the leaves red and yellow and called in the Big Storm guns to battle the sunshine and shower us heavily in bursts throughout the day (super beautiful, I must say, but best of all: washes away all the damn crazy HUGE spiders that have invaded the building and the greenery around here). So suddenly there are only a few fragrant peaches and crapload of pears, apples, pomegranates, and other fall-ish fruits where the plums and plucots and berries spilled forth just a few days ago (or possibly a few weeks ago since I am obviously completely dissociated from real time right now). If I didn't have a calendar and had to guess the date, I'd think it was maybe Labor Day at most. So wrong.

But as far as blogging goes, it's not that I haven't made some attempt. In the past few weeks I've written and somehow not saved for editing the following posts:
Why Iowa is Great (a beginners guide)
Why Jakob is Great (an ode to the pre-three's)
Sneaky Subversive Movies and the Studios that Hide Them (until two minutes before the Oscars, forcing me to suffer "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" when I need some movie time but the screens are utterly bare.)
The Coming Recession.

I will likely not try to recreate these, with exception of Why Iowa is Great, but it will be sadly lacking in photos as my phone was an unworthy tool for capturing more than a few up-close details, and the fellow traveling with me through it's cornish hills and prairies can't be relied upon to send me any of his promised photos (from his dumb i-phone that totally didn't work anywhere in the entire state except Des Moines, by the way).

Oh yeah, that was another entry: Why iphones Are Dumb. I will likely skip that one too, so as to avoid the wrath of the growing Applafia.

Though it has kept me from participating in the blogosphere lately (writing or reading), the one good thing about current work is this: the utter ridiculousness that will make an excellent story one day, maybe even mildly amusing enough of a sitcom scenario to get a pilot made (but not shown, of course). The bad side of this absurdity is that some of the circumstantial hoopla is so totally implausible outside of something like an (admittedly poorly written) sitcom that you will think me totally trite and/or a lier if I try to explain it to you here in a factual rendering.